The Rotten Houseguest

There's an art to being a guest in someone's home. If you are one who enjoys travel and visiting distant friends and relatives you'll discover that in order to gain access to a person's home you either need to be a blood relative where your host feels obligated to open their home to you. Or you need to be the type of person who people love to be around.

If you are a Rotten Houseguest, however, you will only have the opportunity to stay at someone's home once before they decide to never invite you back. Then word will get out that you are not someone who is welcome in another person's home. Since you are incapable of truly being respectful and considerate of your host, you'll want to do the following instead.

Here the top five ways to be a Rotten Houseguest:

First be ungrateful. One of the easiest ways to do this is to scowl. Upon arrival make sure your host knows you don't really want to be there and how ungrateful you are that they have taken time out of their already busy schedule to be so welcoming. You want to avoid any compliments to your hosts on their home, their consideration and everything else they do for you.

Next you want to be extremely unhelpful. Make sure the bathroom you are using is messy and don't picked up after yourself. Leave towels on the floor and clutter personal items all over the counter. If there's no room to store your personal items in the bathroom, scatter them throughout the house so the host knows you need more space. The same applies to the bedroom. Don't make your bed. Toss your clothes all over the floor, not the closet.

You will want to expect your hosts to be tour guides. While they may want to show you around and see some sites, make sure they know you plan that they will continue to take you around day after day after day. Don't map out a plan for what you want to see and how you are going to see it. Don't consider renting a car or taking responsibility for yourself in any way.

While a good guest will want to allow their hosts some downtime and not be your tour guide 24/7, you will make them feel like they are running a hotel. If you are gone first thing in the morning and returning after 10:00 at night, you won't give them a phone call to let them know. That would be considerate and you are a Rotten Houseguest. If you are exploring sites without them, you won't want to invite them to join you at some point. If you go to visit mutual friends or relatives you won't let them know or attempt to include them. You'll want your hosts to be waiting around for you, but you don't really want to spend any extra time with them. When you do arrive back at their place you will expect to be fed a meal. You'll never, however, do some grocery shopping or suggest that you pick up some takeout to either bring back to the house at the end of the workday or that they meet you for a picnic.

Finally, you will want overstay. There's a saying, "houseguests are like fish. After three days they begin to stink." While staying more than three days can be acceptable if you arrange it ahead of time, you aren't going to do this as you love disrupting your host's home. Be inconsiderate. Parade around in your underwear. Drink all their booze and eat all their food. If you borrow their car make sure to bring it back empty and filthy.

While this is not a complete list of how to be inconsiderate when staying on at a friend's or relative's, this is a great start to being a Rotten Houseguest who will never be asked to return in the future.